Fellowship and Grant Opportunities
The IDEAS team offers and supports multiple grants and fellowships for educators seeking to improve their teaching and learning through the innovative use of teaching technologies. Some of these grants are offered in collaboration with campus partners such as The Libraries and The Center for Teaching and Learning. Check here often to find information about these opportunities and the eligibility criteria.
As part of our mission to support innovation in teaching and the effective use of teaching technologies, the Instructional Design, Engagement and Support (IDEAS) group offers the Instructional Innovation fellowship (IIF) to anyone teaching at UMass who has engaged in creative teaching practices and is interested in sharing their ideas with (and learning from) other UMass instructors.
This initiative aims to bring together instructors from a wide range of UMass disciplines to present, share, and discuss innovative uses of technology in their teaching during monthly in-person meetings throughout the academic year.
The Flexible Learning Fellows (FLF) program provides departments with a faculty-led opportunity to identify a path to flexible learning that reflects their unique contexts including the departmental disciplinary focus, degree programs, and students; and provides the participating faculty leaders with a faculty-centered learning community in which they can further their knowledge and skills of flexible pedagogy and, in turn, serve as leaders and models in their department and the university.
The FlexLearning Fellows work closely with staff in the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Instructional Design, Engagement and Support (IDEAS) group as a learning community to:
- Explore and share models of best practices for flexible learning teaching and learning
- Build departmental and disciplinary expertise within a supportive learning community Identify flexible learning approaches that are most appropriate for their departmental flexible learning projects and the resources needed to support their departmental projects
- Explore course design models for flexible learning to support departmental and/or course needs
In collaboration with The Office of the Provost, the University Libraries are launching the 2022 Open Education Initiative (OEI) Grant Award Cycle. The grants provide funding for instructors to adopt, adapt, or create Open Educational Resources (OER). OER are teaching materials released with an open license, which allows for their free revision and redistribution with attribution to the creator of the original work.
The initiative aims to:
- Encourage the development of alternatives to high-cost textbooks by supporting the adoption, adaptation, or creation of OER.
- Provide support to faculty to implement these approaches.
- Lower the cost of college for students in order to contribute to their retention, progression, and graduation.
-
Encourage faculty to engage in new pedagogical models for classroom instruction.
